NetNewsWire is a classic RSS reader. It came out on the Mac more than a decade ago, and it’s still used on OS X and iOS. As a staple application in the Mac community, NetNewsWire has remained a fan favorite despite the lack of updates it has received in recent years.

The world of RSS got rocked last week when Google announced that it was killing Google Reader, one of the most-used RSS aggregators on the internet. In the wake of Google Reader’s death sentence, NetNewsWire is about to be reborn.

A group of developers known as Black Pixel purchased NetNewsWire back in 2011. The look and feel of NetNewsWire hasn’t changed for years, but Black Pixel has been quietly working on a redesign all this time.

The future of NetNewsWire:

First, we intend to bring sync to future versions of NetNewsWire. It’s too soon to go into details about this, but you should know that we recognize how extremely important it is and that it is a top priority for us.

Second, even though we’ve been quiet about it, we have been working on new versions of NetNewsWire for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. We have some great new features and a modern design that we can’t wait to show you.

The iPhone and iPad versions of NetNewsWire have also been completely rewritten “from scratch.” As an alternative to the Google Reader platform, Black Pixel is working on a new syncing solution. iCloud was considered, but Apple’s service had “issues that we simply could not resolve,” according to Black Pixel.

More modern Google Reader apps like Reeder have stolen the spotlight in recent years, but it looks like it will soon be NetNewsWire’s time to shine again. (The developer behind Reeder has said that his app won’t be going anywhere once Google Reader is gone in a few months.)

The death of Google Reader is sad, but it doesn’t look like RSS is going anywhere for the foreseeable future. All kinds of Google Reader alternatives have been popping up, and Digg has said it’s working on its own news aggregator based on Google’s API.

About the author

Alex Heath is a senior writer at Cult of Mac and co-host of the CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like "ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation." If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Twitter always works too.

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